A proposal to redevelop a Lyon Village church as affordable housing for LGBTQ+ seniors continues to get pushback from some neighbors.
Clarendon Presbyterian Church has been seeking to redevelop its property at 1305 N. Jackson Street in partnership with True Ground Housing Partners. Conceptual site plans filed last May depict a six-story building with 102 units, as well as a church and childcare center totaling 8,530 square feet.
The church has yet to file any “formal” site plans and has withdrawn an application for a special GLUP study — meaning that the county isn’t currently considering any land use or zoning applications for the property. However, that hasn’t stopped some nearby residents from sending numerous emails to county leaders, voicing vigorous opposition to the project, according to documents reviewed by ARLnow.
The proposed project will require a rezoning from the R-5 to S-D Special Development district. To get that zoning change, the project will have to go through a public review process.
Neighbor Jon Obenberger, however, is among a vocal group of residents who have called for the proposal to “be rejected without the need for further review.”
He argued in a recent email that a six-story building is too high for the 0.89-acre site. The property is adjacent to single-family homes, three-story townhomes and six-story structures on the other side of 13th Street N.
“I support additional affordable housing, senior housing with proper support, and inclusive access in our neighborhood for LGBTQ+ individuals,” Obenberger wrote. “But I oppose efforts to undermine countywide policies and disregard rules to facilitate the construction of housing facilities.”
Others, including former Planning Commissioner Elinor Schwartz, have argued against the precedent the development would set.
“This proposal by the Church and True Ground Housing Partners, formerly Arlington Partnership for Affordable Housing (APAH) would put at risk any single-family neighborhood throughout the County that has a failing church,” she argued in a December email. “It would enable a large-scale project on any such church site that would heavily impact the neighboring community and strain its infrastructure.”
Across months of correspondence, County Board members have attempted to placate emailers by reminding them that the formal public review process won’t begin until the actual site-plan proposal is filed with the county government.
In a February email, County Board Chair Takis Karantonis said he encourages project partners to be transparent in their dealings with the site’s neighbors — but at this point in the process, he noted, the county government is not directly involved.
“Arlington County can only be responsible for transparency and fairness of the public process associated with a filed project application,” he wrote.
Church leaders have been working on the proposal since 2021. The church’s pastor, the Rev. Alice Rose Tewell, directed ARLnow to the congregation’s website for updates on the project.
In a January promotional video, she and other members of the congregation highlighted affordable housing needs among seniors and members of the LGBTQ+ community, as well as particular challenges that LGBTQ+ seniors face.
“During the pandemic especially, we heard stories of seniors living in their cars, seniors expressing deep loneliness,” she said. “We are proposing with True Ground Housing Partners to tear down everything that we own and build back for better.”
Faced with declining membership and desiring to meet a community need, a number of religious institutions across Arlington have worked to redevelop their sites into mixed-use projects with affordable housing components.
Most recently, Central United Methodist Church partnered with True Ground Housing Partners on Unity Homes at Ballston.
The result, which opened in early 2024, was a campus that now includes 144 committed-affordable units, new sanctuary space, a commercial kitchen for onsite food distribution, a meeting hall and an early childhood education space to accommodate approximately 90 children.
Arlington leaders have made affordable housing development a key priority in recent years, and in the recent case of Melwood’s plan to redevelop a parcel near Crystal City, determined that the housing goals overrode neighborhood concerns that the proposal was too big for the surrounding community.
This article has been updated to reflect that Clarendon Presbyterian Church is in Lyon Village, not Lyon Park.
